“Do I have to?”
This question is familiar to parents, and for good reason.
Children can generally grasp strict justice and quid pro quo before they understand virtue, so the questions “Do I have to clean my room? Do I have to eat this? Do I have to go to school?” make sense to them; the questions seek justification in terms of what is owed at a minimum. The questions don’t make sense in the same way to parents who have made a lot of sacrifices for the child and become a constant annoyance. This is why a major task of parents is to help their children develop virtuous dispositions.
Opposed to a worldview of strict recompense that asks, “How little can I give?” is a virtuous worldview that understands that good acts build up the person who does them. Learning, working, and service don’t define a person, but they are integral to each of us. A virtue is a firm and habitual disposition to do what is good, and it directs a person’s sensory and spiritual powers to pursue what is good. A virtuous disposition asks, “What good can I do?” Even on a purely human level without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, virtue is a reflection of how God acts.
These opposing viewpoints are a way of seeing the questions that frame the parable in today’s Gospel. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” After enunciating the great commandment, this question seeks a minimum, a boundary for love, the perspective of a child asking, “Do I have to?” After the parable, Jesus flips the script: “Who was a neighbor to the man?” The parable didn’t answer the question, Whom must I love? But rather, Whose action showed love?
A central theme of the Gospel of Luke is God’s mercy. By definition, this means he gives what is undeserved and cannot be earned. He makes himself a neighbor because of what he does – the good he can do, not what is strictly obliged. Jesus gives the pattern for virtuous action that reflects the mercy God extends to us, so that we can understand his command, “Go and do likewise.”
Fr. Nate
